By Dana McMahan
FoodConnect Louisville
dana@foodconnect.com

I have a bone to pick with Wolfgang Puck. Not that I expect him to listen, but here goes:

Wolfgang, if you’re going to promise “hand-crafted gourmet pizzas” and claim to “use only the finest ingredients to prepare … food fresh-to-order in just minutes,” in your Wolfgang Puck Express restaurants, how about you follow through?

You recently opened a location within walking distance of my office in downtown Louisville. You’re a big chef, so I thought I should check out this take on “fast-casual.” I ordered your Tuscan Vegetable, one of your “hand crafted gourmet” pizzas. The menu described it as: Oven-roasted tomatoes, eggplant, fennel, rapini, mozzarella, fontina,Grana Padano Parmesan and goat cheeses with pesto sauce. Yum, yum and yum!

After waiting longer than I would expect in a place named “Express” my pizza arrived. It featured all the toppings your menu promised, as well as two more: mushrooms and peppers. This may be a minor annoyance to most — your inclusion of toppings not mentioned on the menu. But I happen to have a severe intolerance to mushrooms, and would end up in the hospital if I ate them. And while I’m not allergic to peppers, I’d rather go hungry than eat anything with so much as a hint of pepper flavor. (That’s not an idle comment. On 10-hour flights when the vegetarian meal is made with peppers I wait until I get home to eat.)

My lunch time was over though, so I ate a couple slices of my co-workers pizzas and headed back to work.

Fast forward a couple of months, and I’m ready to give you another try. This time I explain to the cashier that I need the Tuscan Vegetable without mushrooms and peppers.

“Oh, we can’t do that. They’re already in the vegetable mix.”

What? Your hand crafted pizzas made fresh to order are prepared with a pre-made vegetable mix??

Your secret’s out Wolfgang. Not only are your pizzas anything but handcrafted and made to order, you don’t seem to particularly care about pleasing your customers.

Next time consider one of two things. Tell us what’s really in your food, be prepared to make pizzas to order, or don’t claim your food is something it’s not.